The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand,
oil on panel, 101 x 61.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Southern Germany;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 19 October 1993, lot 152;
Private collection, Austria;
sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 21 April 2015, lot 209;
Private collection, Vienna

The present painting derives from the woodcut of the same subject by Albrecht Dürer, circa 1496, which revels in displaying brutal methods of torture and execution. Though no less macabre, the present composition feels less cluttered and compressed, though at the expense of several key omissions, notably the rolling heads that litter the scene, the flagellation of the Roman soldiers at the heart of the composition, and the particularly barbaric depiction of a bishop’s eye being gouged out with a hand crank.

Dürer again returned to the subject in 1508 when he was commissioned by Frederick III, Elector of Saxony to produce the painting for the All Saints’ Church, Wittenberg, to coincide with his collection of relics that included some of the ten thousand martyrs. The painting is now conserved at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. GG 835).

The present painting illustrates the legendary martyrdom of the Roman general Acatius and his ten thousand soldiers carried out on Mount Ararat by the King of Persia, Shapur I, on the order of the Roman emperor Hadrian, after their conversion to Christianity.

Though popularised by Dürer’s rendition, the macabre subject became worthy of depiction as early as the 13th century. Indeed, works with this subject remained a rarity until the early modern period when, under the backdrop of the religious wars of the early 16th century, it particularly resonated in the German-speaking countries and in Northern Italy.